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The use of lead-poisoned palladium catalysts, introduced by Herbert Lindlar in the 1950’s, still dominates for selective hydrogenations in fine chemical applications. Nevertheless, the search for a more environmentally friendly and efficient catalyst has been a pursued goal in this field.

Now researchers from ETH Zürich, EMPA and ICIQ (Masoud Shahrokhi and Núria López) have published a paper in Nature Communications, presenting sustainable alternatives to catalysts applied to alkyne semi-hydrogenation in industrial organic synthesis. They report a simple and scalable treatment of supported palladium nanoparticles with sodium sulfide, which leads to a crystalline palladium sulfide phase with controlled crystallographic orientation. It exhibits unparalleled performance in the semi‑hydrogenation of alkynes in the liquid phase, which is rationalized at the molecular level.